Review

Suggested alternate title: The Thankless Domesticity.

Props must be given to The Reckless Moment for being one of the rare films of its era to plainly acknowledge the raw deal women get in society. Of course, the film also reinforces said raw deal by billing its chain-smoking heart and soul, Joan Bennett, beneath James Mason, who gives a weak performance to a weaker character. Along with Bennett and the cacophonous existence written for her, Burnett Guffey’s… See more →

I walked into the theater with my skin practically peeled back in invitation, but The Witch just couldn’t quite get under it, and I’m not sure why. The film is exquisitely crafted, with thoughtful attention to period details, desaturated cinematography that is underlit to terrific effect, and a spare, dread-inducing score. The script is an often compelling examination of a deteriorating family, and how communal isolation intensifies the ill effects of religious fervor and gender… See more →

I... don’t know what I was expecting.

Exhaustive and exhausting, Electric Boogaloo’s overview of Cannon Films’ raucous history covers dozens of the production company’s provocative movies with blinding speed. Given that its subject at its peak averaged nearly one film produced per week, the pace is appropriate, and the clips and talking heads all whiz by so fast that reflection yields little more than an admittedly mesmerizing blur of explosions and boobs. Enough sunk in to convince me to revisit Cannon’s… See more →

Animated films aimed at broad audiences rarely take real advantage of the medium’s expressive potential, opting instead for one or another flavor of mannered representationalism. Boy & the World is a delightful exception, channeling the magical realism of a child’s naïve perspective to create a singularly vibrant, rhythmic aesthetic. Both a polemic and an affirmation, the film is occasionally heavy-handed with its politics, but not enough to undermine its core exploration of a generational spectrum… See more →

As successfully as any film I can recall, Carol captures the desperation that accompanies falling in love, and its fuzzy 16 mm rendering gives it the feel of a memory whose potency is undiminished by distance.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am wary of the seductive power of nostalgia. The original Star Wars trilogy loomed so large in my generation’s childhood that any meaningful attempt to revive it was going to be met with uncritical optimism. So as I cheered along with a packed theater on the opening night of The Force Awakens, I remembered that I had done much the same thing sixteen years earlier for The Phantom Menace, which,… See more →

On an emotional level, the aspect of Spotlight that had the biggest impact on me was its journalists’ team dynamic, and the team’s (mostly) unfailing trust in each other to do the job right, even in the middle of the highest-stakes investigation of their careers. In a discussion about the film, this was described with a colloquialism I hadn’t heard before, and which I found too perfect not to make a note of here: competence… See more →

At its best, Ghost in the Shell is a striking exercise in worldbuilding. If they were extended, I could probably watch an hour or two of its atmospheric montages of daily life in Hong Kong’s near future, whose sights and sounds are at once dreamlike and palpable. But as an exercise in storytelling, it’s disappointing that a film with such strong visuals and interesting ideas relies almost entirely on dialogue for its expository and thematic… See more →

It’s been a shitty week, but luckily @lowtheband came to town tonight to wash off the muck.

As Mondays go, it turns out that the one where you get to see a free, surprise Stevie Wonder show is a winner.

1. How old is the youngest person alive who unironically uses the phrase “making love?”
2. How old is the youngest Richard alive who consents to being called Dick?
3. Is Rob Gordon velumiphobic?

As an indictment of our news media’s bloodlust and its complicity in racist fear mongering, the machinations of Nightcrawler’s Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Nina Romina (Rene Russo) have the depth and subtlety of a Chick tract. Their unashamed “if it bleeds, it leads” philosophy is transparently arranged for maximum repugnance*, presumably with the intention of ironically using TV journalism’s own brand of reductive alarmism against it. But the staging of their discussions makes… See more →

The Damned is an odd crossbreed of outlaw biker film, love story, and atomic-age science fiction, and this unlikely amalgam allows the film to give equal time to several of the Western Bloc’s competing attitudes about the Cold War era.

In the idyllic seaside town of Weymouth, King (Oliver Reed) and his gang of delinquents, The Teddy Boys, spend their days terrorizing tourists. After becoming one of the gang’s victims, the affluent Simon (MacDonald Carey)… See more →

I think it’s fair to say that Faith No More had run its course by the time the band split up in 1998, and seventeen years later, Sol Invictus finds the guys pretty much picking up right where they left off, which renders the album sadly inessential. This is not to say that it’s bad, especially by reunion record standards, but none of its songs are likely to become classics, and some probably should have… See more →

Color me impressed that @ChamberMonster managed to keep a secret for 2+ months, and tonight we’re seeing Stephin Merritt!

After being a Wussy fan for a few years, I only just now noticed that this song borrows liberally from the Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks.”

Though a few good bands are included, no one on this compilation does an even remotely compelling Nirvana cover.

I haven’t heard or thought much about this album in probably at least fifteen years. Apropos of nothing, several songs from it have been getting stuck in my head lately, and it’s very confusing.

I never expected to get so much enjoyment from something that reminds me of Sheryl Crow.

What a difference a shift in perspective makes. David Robert Mitchell’s directorial debut, The Myth of the American Sleepover, was a pensive coming-of-age drama that showed promise but was ultimately defeated by its own one-note sotto voce. With It Follows, Mitchell takes on the same themes much more successfully by funneling them through a simple but ingenious horror premise: the carrier of a sexually-transmitted curse is slowly but relentlessly pursued by a malevolent, shape-shifting being… See more →

Needs more cowbell.

The original Uncle Buck is still the best, but this is a really fun remake.

A lot of Assault on Precinct 13’s potential appeal rides on its antihero, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), but the character just doesn’t get there. All of his sardonic one-liners are limp punch lines in search of a joke, and Joston’s portrayal of him as a notorious, cavalier killer is bland and ineffectual, completely absent the menace he is presumed to possess.

A caricature of creativity.

The three things I find most interesting about Breakfast at Tiffany’s:

1. Made in 1961 at the tail end of the Production Code era, it is fascinating to see the film tiptoe around the fact that its two main characters are essentially prostitutes.
2. Even if one forgives its gobsmacking racism, I can’t begin to imagine how Mickey Rooney’s way-over-the-top slapstick could have been deemed fit for inclusion in this or any other film made for adults.
3. The… See more →

This superfluous sequel to The Trip is distinguished from its predecessor in two ways: 1) The titular road trip swaps northern England for Italy, and 2) Rob Brydon tries his hand at the mid-life crisis Steve Coogan had in the first film. Otherwise, The Trip to Italy is more of the same, and I do mean more. Remember all those celebrity impressions? They were funny, right? Here they are again, seemingly sans editing, driven far… See more →

My five favorite films of 2014, in alphabetical order.

Boyhood

Richard Linklater

In less skilled hands, Boyhood’s twelve years in production might not have amounted to much more than a (very ambitious) stunt, but instead, Richard Linklater’s landmark coming-of-age opus is accessible without being straightforward, and thoughtful without being ponderous. Its 165 minutes are breezy and unrushed, and yet it is over before you know it. I guess kids really do grow up fast.… See more →

There are many enjoyable moments in Inherent Vice’s drug-addled noir, most of them occurring between Joaquin Phoenix’s hippie P.I. and Josh Brolin’s crooked cop. As a whole, though, the stupor the audience is made to share with the protagonist renders the intricacies of the hardboiled plot largely impenetrable. That bewildering effect is fitting but unsatisfying.

Last month I described Birdman – unfavorably – as a “series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital ‘A’ Art.” I wouldn’t have guessed that a short time later, another film fitting that description would knock me on my ass.

Whiplash is a trenchant examination of greatness, approaching the idea not by deconstructing a success story, but instead by observing an integral moment in the life of someone who … See more →

Yowza, this thing stressed me the fuck out.

There’s not enough good stuff here to sustain an entire 75-minute special, but Chelsea generally keeps things moving at a good clip, so the lulls between the more satisfying laughs are never too long, and her style strikes a nice balance between sardonic and wacky, which elevates even her weakest jokes. The writing and directing tries to mess with the traditional standup form by adding lots of weird non-sequiturs – mostly quick, scripted cuts to… See more →

A technically adroit series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital “A” Art, Birdman pays lip service to the nuance that accompanies authenticity, but it tends to make its points as loudly as possible. This is probably about as good as overwrought showbiz navel gazing gets, and it’s still pretty off-putting.

6. The Devil’s Rain. USA, 1975. Satanism is basically the same as Christianity, only less scary. Body count: zzz... ★

5. Blood and Roses. France, 1960. Certainly the most elegant film of the day, but too sedate. Striking dream sequence. Body count: 2. ★★½

4. Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors. UK, 1965. Super fun anthology with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Body count: 9 (and a dog). ★★★½

3. Rituals. Canada, 1977. Well, that was dark. Basically Deliverance II. Body count: 5. ★★★

2. Food of the Gods. USA, 1976. Who knew country rats were so much bigger than city rats? Body count: 5. ★★★

1. The Vampire’s Coffin. Mexico, 1950s. Rubber bats ahoy! Body count: 2. ★★½

Today’s supremely shitty weather is perfect for sitting in a theater for 12 solid hours of horror films, which is exactly what I’m doing.

Having cut his teeth producing Stuart Gordon’s celebrated H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, Brian Yuzna aims for the same audience with Society, his directorial debut. Its turbo-charged sex drive and comic body horror will be familiar to fans of Re-Animator and From Beyond, but unlike his work with Gordon, with Society Yuzna appears to have giddily assembled a special effects crew before he even hired screenwriters.

The plot, such as it is, follows a high school basketball… See more →

On the surface, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò seems like it requires some unpacking, at least for those of us without graduate degrees. Relocating the Marquis de Sade’s depraved novel The 120 Days of Sodom to Mussolini’s northern Italy in 1943, it name-drops Nietzsche, Proust, Ezra Pound, and others as it systematically humiliates and tortures a group of eighteen captive adolescents. But Salò’s goal is not opaque intellectualism for its own sake. Its poetic and… See more →

After reading up on Black Sabbath a bit, I wish I had sought out the original Italian version, rather than settling for the sanitized English version released by American International Pictures (which is the one currently available on Netflix in the States). Of the film’s three short stories, one (“The Telephone”) is edited severely enough to completely change its meaning, but thankfully, a discerning eye can still spot traces of its more lurid giallo origins… See more →

There’s not a single original moment in this vengeful ghost story, but the care it puts into presenting its collection of haunted house tropes makes it surprisingly enjoyable. Soaked in atmosphere, The Woman in Black’s familiarity doesn’t prevent it from being frequently chilling.

In The Mist, a few dozen townspeople are trapped in a Maine grocery store enveloped in a thick fog which is inhabited by mysterious, deadly creatures, and order dissolves at roughly the same rate as the hope of rescue. Conceptually, the film’s central interest in humanity as its own biggest enemy is intriguing (á la The Twilight Zone’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”), but its expression of that theme is somewhat ham-fisted. Marcia… See more →

A friend once said that early Skinny Puppy sounded like “someone left Depeche Mode out on the counter overnight,” which I think is a perfect description. I don’t think he meant it as a compliment, but I do.

Fuck, you guys. White Lung.

Man, this is great. Better produced and more melodic and varied than White Lung’s previous efforts, without sacrificing any of the band’s frantic aggression. The howling vocals, the intricate guitar lines, the four-on-the-floor stomp – this record kills.

Spent the evening catching up with @mrclean, @magnetbox, and @ems, followed by some rock and/or roll from those Dead Milkmen. Summertime!

I can’t decide if Tesco and the boys resurfacing the same week as #YesAllWomen is the worst timing ever or the best.